India: Three Held Over US Tourist Gang Rape Police in northern India say they have arrested three men suspected of attacking an American hitchhiker.

Violence against women has sparked protests across India

Indian police have arrested three men over the gang rape of a US tourist who claims she was attacked after she hitched a ride in a truck.

The 30-year-old American accepted a lift on Monday night in Manali, a tourist destination in the foothills of the Himalayas, after struggling to find a taxi to return to her hotel.

The woman told police the truck driver and two accomplices then abducted her and took her to a secluded spot where they raped her for over an hour.

"Three men have been arrested in connection with the rape," said Vinod Dhawan, the police chief of Kullu district in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, where the attack happened.

The tourist has given officers a description of the men and also identified the model of the truck, which is commonly used to transport construction materials in the state.

More than 2,000 trucks a day ply the Manali highway which connects the town with remote Himalayan villages.

Police said they had gathered forensic evidence and identified tyre marks from the scene of the attack. Roadblocks had been set up to check vehicles leaving the resort town.
Police stop a tourist bus at a checkpoint put in place following the rape

The woman, who has not been identified, is staying under police protection at a hotel in the Manali area, some 300 miles (500km) north of the capital New Delhi.

The attack comes as India faces intense scrutiny over its efforts to curb violence against women following the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a bus in Delhi last December.

A survey by an Indian trade body earlier this year found the number of female tourists visiting the country had dropped by 35% following several sex attacks that made global headlines.

The Delhi bus rape prompted mass protests across India as simmering anger about the treatment of women in the country was brought to the surface.

Further attacks included the alleged gang-rape of a Swiss cyclist in the central state of Madhya Pradesh in March.

In a separate incident the same month, a British woman travelling in northern India jumped out of the third-floor window of her hotel room in Uttar Pradesh fearing a sexual attack after the hotel's owner tried to force his way into the room.

Measures passed by MPs in March increased punishments for sex offenders to include the death penalty if a victim dies and a minimum 20-year prison sentence for gang-rape.